This may be the most well done metal / hard rock / etc disc that has ever been recorded. I am so floored with its completeness, its power, its pain that I really don’t know what else to say other than all pre-release hype was understated. May this system never cease.

System Of A Down: explosive and infectious second album from America`s most inventive modern metal band.

THANK GOD they haven`t disappointed us. Three years on from a truly classic debut that arrived like a bolt out of the blue and System Of A Down have done the honourable thing and only gone and bettered it. Читать полностью »

No getting around it — «all research and successful drug policy shows/That treatment should be increased/And law enforcement decreased/While abolishing mandatory-minimum sentences» is one unmanageable mouthful of a lyric. But Serj Tankian doesnёt try to manage it, doesnёt try to make the statement sound artful or clever. Instead, the System of a Down frontman reaches deep into his lungs, fetches his most harrowing drill-sergeant bellow and spews this position statement as deliberately as a protester who wants to get every word out before a cop smashes his face into the cement.

When SOAD released their sophomore album Toxicity last year, few would have expected the album to do quite as well as it has. Granted, the band were on the verge of a breakthrough to the mainstream, but the success of Toxicity has broken boundaries even the most devoted fanatics of the band could have hoped for.

Considering their obsessions include war, power and death, it should be easier to take System Of A Down seriously. Some might argue that`s the fault of the cynical listener, embarrassed by the band`s uninhibited passion and political commitment. Or maybe it`s just because this is a band who, on a song called «Chic’n’Stu», believe a pizza recipe serves as a searing condemnation of consumerism. «Pepperoni and green peppers/mushrooms, olives, chives!» trills Serj Tankian operatically, before yelping «Therapy! Therapy! Advertising causes me!»